Tit and the Moon, The

Tete is an imaginative ten-year-old who feels neglected when his baby brother is born. He turns green with envy and cannot stand looking at his brother slobbering all over his mother's breasts. ''Why do I have to drink cow's milk while that little monster gets all the milk from my mother's breasts?'', is Tete's point of view. He decides to ask the moon for help in finding his own breast…

The Catalonian filmmaker Bigas Luna's comedy La teta i la Luna is the third and final part in his trilogy on Homo Ibericus, the follow up to Jamón Jamón and Huevos de Oro. The first film was about eroticism, the second about sex and the third film is about love, according to Bigas Luna.

Tete is a Catalonian boy who climbs high up on the so called castels - pyramids made up of people standing on top of each other. Tete has a breast-fixation and is totally preoccupied with his mother's breasts, which nobody but his newborn baby brother has access to. When the French circus dancer Estrellita - ''The Queen of Stuttgart'' - turns up at the caravan site near Tete's house, he transfers his Oedipus fixation on a substitute breast - Estrellita's. But to his disappointment she does not live on her own in her trailer, she is accompanied by a man, Maurice, ''le Petoman'' - King of Farts - Estrellita's partner. Tete also has to compete with Miquel, an Andalusian teenager who serenades Estrellita in a flamenco style every night.

Together they form one of the most eccentric trios within cinema history - three men of widely different ages who all desire and love Estrellita, each in their own way. Tete, with the limited experiences of a child, interprets his surroundings in a very personal way. According to Tete the sexual act is a kind of refilling process, in which the man refills the woman with breast milk.

La teta i la Luna is a surreal, poetic love story with frequent nods towards cinema history - the dream sequences are open tributes to fellow-countryman Luis Buñuel. Fellini himself would have felt right at home in several scenes, Estrellita dancing among the clouds, for example.

La teta i la Luna is also a loving satire on contemporary Catalonia, depicted as a melting pot for the old and the new, the domestic and the foreign. Tete's parents are highly patriotic Catalonians, Miquel is a charnego - the son of Andalusian immigrants, while Estrellita and Maurice are French. On Bigas Luna's colourful palette the Catalonian flag share its space with flamenco, Edith Piaf, Harley Davidson and farts. A useful lesson at a time when intolerance and patriotism are spreading at terrifying speed.
ANNELIE BOJSTAD

Orig. titel
TETA I LA LUNA, LA: Medverkande
Mathilda May, Gérard Darmon, Miguel Poveda: Producent
Andres Vicente Gomez: Manus
Cuca Canals & Bigas Luna: Foto
José Luís Algaine: Musik
Nicola Piovani: Talat språk
Catalan, French, Spanish